The present invention relates to a guide plate for a power hand tool, in particular an angle grinding machine.
More particularly, it relates to such a guide plate which guides the power hand tool along a guide rail placed on a workpiece, with a guide channel to embrace the guide rail and with guide surfaces designed in the guide channel for sliding along the lateral surfaces of the guide rail.
In a known guide plate of this type for a portable circular saw (DE 30 07 310 C2), the guide channel is formed by tabs, which are partly punched out of the guide plate and bent up from the plane of the plate. The tabs extend parallel at a clear separation from one another which is slightly larger than the width of the guide rail, and with their side faces which protrude at approximately right angles to the guide plate and which face each other, they form the guide surfaces whose surface normals extend parallel with the rotational axis of the saw blade. The tabs extend virtually over the entire length of the guide plate, leaving lands only at the ends of the guide plate. For greater stiffness of the guide plate, several bridges distributed over the length of the guide channel can be provided.
In order to achieve a smooth guidance of the guide plate on the guide rail, which will not jam and is free from play, and which will ensure close cutting tolerances of the portable circular saw, the punched tabs must be bent up very precisely so as to provide the required close guidance tolerance of the guide channel. This makes the manufacturing process of the guide plate very costly.